The FBI finally has begun to contact some of the tea party groups targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for inappropriate scrutiny in the first public signs that the administration’s criminal investigation is progressing.

A lawyer representing some of the tea party groups that battled the IRS for tax-exempt status told The Washington Times that a “small number” of his clients were recently contacted, seven months after the investigation was supposed to have begun.

The progress was revealed a day after The Times reported that the Justice Department lawyer who is leading the investigation into the IRS, Barbara Kay Bosserman, has donated more than $6,000 to President Obama’s presidential campaigns — a move that, for many Republicans, has called into question the entire investigation.

“They say the fox isn’t good to guard the henhouse; the fox is probably not good to investigate the henhouse, either,” said Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican. “I think these investigations need to be done by independent people outside of the administration.”

Mr. Holder ordered an FBI investigation in the days immediately after the internal auditor of the IRS revealed that the agency had been inappropriately targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and wrongly delayed the approval of hundreds of conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status.

Little has been heard about the progress of the investigation in the eight months since, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa began his own investigation into the FBI’s efforts.

The FBI has rejected many of Mr. Issa’s requests for documents, but the California Republican said he did learn that Ms. Bosserman was leading the investigation from the Justice Department. On Wednesday, Mr. Issa sent a letter to Mr. Holder saying the selection of an Obama campaign donor tainted the entire investigation.

The Justice Department appointed a political supporter of President Obama who has donated to his re-election efforts to head its criminal investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a member of the panel, said Thursday they discovered that Barbara Bosserman, a DOJ trial attorney now spearheading the department's investigation of the IRS targeting, has donated at least $6,750 to Obama's election campaigns and the Democratic National Committee over the last several years.

Issa and Jordan wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, pointing out the conflict of interest and urging Bosserman's immediate removal from the ongoing IRS probe.

“By selecting a significant donor to President Obama to lead an investigation into the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups the department has created a startling conflict of interest,” they wrote.

“It is unbelievable that the Department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government's systematic targeting and harassment of organizations opposed to the President's policies," they continued. "At the very least, Ms. Bosserman's involvement is highly inappropriate and has compromised the Administration's investigation of the IRS."

A cursory search of Federal Election Commission records on the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics' www.opensecrets.org found a total of $4,250 donations to Obama or the DNC since 2008. The majority of those donations - $3,600 - went directly to Obama's presidential campaign with another $650 going to the DNC.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said federal law prohibits the consideration of political affiliation of career employees in making personnel decisions.

"Republican lawmakers Thursday blamed the Obama administration for the stunning resurgence of Iraq’s al-Qaeda franchise and called on the White House to take assertive steps to help Baghdad beat back militant uprisings in the country’s west.

" That's how Ernesto Londono opened his January 10 story "Republicans blame Obama administration for al-Qaeda resurgence in Iraq," a front-page-worthy story which Washington Post editors buried on page A10.

By contrast, the Post ran not one but two Chris Christie bridge-scandal stories on the Friday edition's front page.

The other stories rounding out the front page centered on efforts to hash out a long-term security agreement with Afghanistan, the Washington Redskins announcing their new head coach, and privacy/data-collection concerns from dashboard computers in new cars.